Stephen Pallaras (Sunday
Mail, 21/10/2007) has made
it his mission of the week
to get rid of guns in South
Australia. He has been
criticized by many in the
state for the lack of
evidence that his proposal
will have any practical
effect on the criminal
misuse of guns. He says that
if there were no guns, there
would be no criminal misuse
of them. He is wrong.

It’s a bit late for that
simplistic view to be
successful. Banning the
legal use of guns will not
stop their illegal use. The
United Kingdom has banned
all civilian ownership of
handguns yet the criminal
use of those same handguns
has sky-rocketed there.

Australia banned
semi-automatic rifles and
shotguns in 1996 but the
murder rate has dropped not
one iota because of that.
What has happened is that
while the incidence of
homicide with guns has
indeed declined, the overall
rate has remained constant
because other means have
been substituted. Research
by the Australian Institute
of Criminology shows that
licensed gun owners are not
the cause of the criminal
misuse of guns. Mr Pallaras,
of all people, should
understand that criminals
are lawbreakers by
definition, and the simple
act of banning guns will not
prevent their acquisition
for illegal purposes.

He says shooters ignore the
fact that firearms are
stolen from gun owners each
year. But he also chooses to
ignore press reports
indicating that machine guns
and munitions have been
stolen from government
armories and attempts to lay
the whole blame on civilian
owners. He also ignores the
fact that theft from
licensed owners is
decreasing year by year.

His strategies, being
fallacious, will not work so
he indulges in name calling.
Those who own guns legally,
having jumped through hoops
to achieve that, are
“weekend cowboys and “Dirty
Harry” wannabees”. He
claims that the “weekend
cowboys” attitude is “I want
to shoot and the rest of the
world be damned”, and that
it is an attitude devoid of
honesty and integrity. He
accuses gun owners of being
unable to suggest an
alternative strategy.

But shooters have been
advocating alternative
approaches for years but
people like Stephen Pallaras
are too arrogant to
acknowledge them. Here’s one
of them: prosecute offenders
who use a gun in the
commission of a crime to the
fullest extent allowed by
law - don’t just slap their
wrist and release them back
into the community.

Mr Pallaras claims that none
who opposed him were police
officers, parents of
children who worry about the
impact of street crime,
doctors, nurses etc; the
cacophony of protest came
from the “gun clubs” he
says. How does he know, is
he a mind reader?

Shooters come from a
representative cross-section
of the community. They
represent every occupation
and profession from
architects to truck drivers
to zoologists, and certainly
include police officers,
doctors and nurses - and
parents who worry about
their children. They cannot
be dismissed as “weekend
cowboys” or “Dirty Harry
wannabees.”

Mr Pallaras ends with a
quote from Humphrey Bogart
film, The Big Sleep:
“My, my, my. Such a lot of
guns around and so few
brains.” Here’s one for him
from Plato:
"Good people do not need
laws to tell them to act
responsibly, while bad
people will find a way
around the laws."